catharsis

queen of impulse, more or less 21. loves few but hard, hates canoodling and other conditional realities

[ivysole]

"In love with love but love don’t love back."

Stop. Love always loves back. See the forest through the trees.

[nargessi]

When “i” is replaced with “we” even illness becomes wellness.

Malcolm X (via amorestavivo)

This changed me.

(via losingfatfindingfit)

[yo-sunnifer-deactivated20150206]

Feel no guilt / feel no guilt / feel no guilt

Night out. Saturday morning. About to go to the bagel shop with a book. Do everything with a purpose because we are blessed for how much we can do without one. Privileged.

[gentlechamomile]

I once knew a man who came on very strong at the beginning of relationships, but couldn’t seem to help closing his heart as soon as a woman had opened hers. I have heard that kind of behavior referred to as an “addiction to the attraction phase” in relationships. This man did not maliciously go around hurting women. He sincerely wanted to be in a genuine, committed relationship. What he lacked were the spiritual skills that would enable him to settle down in one place long enough to build anything solid with an equal partner. As soon as he saw human faults and weaknesses in a woman, he would run. The narcissistic personality is looking for perfection, which is a way to make sure that love NEVER has a chance to blossom. The initial high can be so heady, so tantalizing, that the real work of growth which needs to follow the initial attraction phase can seem too dull, too hard to commit to. As soon as the other person is seen to be a real human being, the ego is repelled and wants to find somewhere else to play. At the end of a relationship with someone like this, we feel as though we’ve taken cocaine. We had a fast and exciting ride, and it felt at the time like something meaningful was happening. Then we crashed and realized that nothing meaningful had happened at all. It was all made up. Now all we have is a headache, and we can see that this kind of thing isn’t good, isn’t healthy, and we don’t want to do it again. But there’s a reason why we’re attracted to relationships such as this. We were drawn to the illusion of meaning. Sometimes someone who has nothing to offer in a real relationship can come on like they’re offering the world. They are so dissociated from their OWN feelings that they have become highly skilled performers, unconsciously playing whatever part our fantasies prescribe. But the responsibility for our pain still remains OUR own. If we hadn’t been looking for a cheap thrill, we wouldn’t have been vulnerable to the lie. How could we have been so stupid? That’s the question we always ask ourselves at the end of these experiences. But once we’d had enough of them, we admit to ourselves that we weren’t really stupid AT ALL. We suspected this was a drug. The problem was, we wanted it. We saw exactly what the game was with this person, usually within the first fifteen minutes, yet we were so attracted to the high, we were willing to PRETEND we didn’t see it, for just a night, or a week, or however long it lasted. The fact that someone said to us, “You are so fabulous. You’re such a wonderful woman. This is such a great date. How lucky a guy is to get to date you,” when he’s only known you for an hour, is a blinking red light to any thinking woman. The problem is, the depth of our wounds can be so great—we can be SO hungry to hear those words, because deep down we suspect that they’re untrue—that hearing them can cause us to put aside all rational consideration. When we’re starved, we’re desperate.

Marianne Williamson (via fauxlita)

[kangalangaroo]

Cambridge Elegy by Sharon Olds

I hardly know how to speak to you now, you are so young now, closer to my daughter's age than mine -- but I have been there and seen it, and must tell you, as the seeing and hearing spell the world into the deaf-mute's hand. The tiny dormer windows like the ears of a fox, like the long row of teats on a pig, still perk up over the Square, though they're digging up the street now, as if digging a grave, the shovels shrieking on stone like your car sliding along on its roof after the crash. How I wanted everyone to die I if you had to die, how sealed into my own world I was, deaf and blind. What can I tell you now, now that I know so much and you are a  freshman still, drinking a quart of orange juice and playing three sets of tennis to cure a hangover, such an ardent student of the grown-ups! I can tell you we were right, our bodies were right, life was pleasurable in every cell. Suddenly I remember the exact look of your body, but better than the bright corners of your eyes, or the puppy-fat of your thighs, or the slick chino of your pants bright in the corners of my eyes, I  remember your extraordinary act of courage in loving me, something no one but the blind and halt had done before. You were fearless, you could drive after a sleepless night just like a grown-up, and not be afraid, you could fall asleep at the wheel easily and never know it, each blond hair of your head -- and they were thickly laid -- put out like a filament of light, twenty years ago. The Charles still slides by with that ease as your death was hard, wanted all things broken and rigid as the bricks in the sidewalk or your love for me stopped cell by cell in your young body, Ave -- I went ahead and had the children, the life of ease and faithfulness, the palm and the breast, every millimeter of delight in the body. I took the road we stood on at the start together, I took it all without you as if in taking it after all I could most honor you.

[humansofnewyork]

"They came to America shortly after I was born. At first, my dad worked construction and my mom did cleaning jobs. Now he owns a newsstand, and she owns a boutique. They are my idols."

[humansofnewyork]

"I tend to be cynical about a lot of things, but Maya Angelou is somebody that no matter how much I pick her apart, she still has integrity. She was a victim of incest and rape, and she worked as a stripper. And now she’s a literary icon and Nobel Laureate. It goes to show that life is cumulative, and you can’t devalue any type of experience."

[accordingtoindie]

This right here.

[fruitsaladchewits-deactivated20]

[ivysole]

Palestinian lady collects gas bombs fired by Israeli army. She grows flowers in these bombs.

What is war but losing sight of love, of beauty

[kangalangaroo]

plunge

i remember:     how the wrecking ball danced madly

through the living room.     the waltzing bodies of two monks

burning until the war is over          if you are deeply in love, then dance.

maybe, there is little peace to march for.     

maybe this here was never peace,     but will you pocket me     please

the smallest piece of yourself?

after i learned to dance, i tied my sneakers together by the laces.

slung them over a big power line and walked away

from the neighborhood i grew up in.

home      was an electric place     was a body in shock

of what bodies can do to one another.     home

is a pile of brick mound of brittle bone dog and beast man’s best pal

her invisible friend     invisible child knows no better              

than to run from what she sees

and call it:     a mastery of the waltz.

the divine slowdance of her parents’ bodies

              burning until the war was never over

but the wrecking ball, too, is worthy of protection.         

every stubborn survivor wants to be saved.      

so when the bleach pinkens your favorite white blouse, wear it proud like flesh.

when the glare bullies your skin into a bruised submission,

let your body praise the seasons like a flower:

  my bloom and wilt belong only to you.  

i used to practice my grip like the muscle it is

i have since discovered:     it takes thousands of tries

to crush the heart’s thickest longing

in the palm of your hand

after all, things much bigger and heavier than the palm of my hand

still fit      in the palm of my hand.

i hesitate to hold          but there is no dishonesty

in falling headfirst from the sky to the ground

as the things we cannot bear to lose

appear most clear in our line of sight

because      the plunge of desire      is honest.

the stomach sinking wild with hunger

as the question courts the answer:     as the coin, mid-flip --

and suddenly

you know what you want from gravity

you know     that who you love

is who you have always known you have loved

always

you have always known who it is

you wish would love you

[mother-iron-deactivated20140606]

Be with someone who motivates you to be a better person, understands your pace and helps you improve it, respects your good ambitions, helps you unlearn dangerous patterns and habits. Someone who you love but don’t centralize. It is so important to understand the difference...

[mikelmok]

Remember that time we went to downtown jamaica plain to find places to eat at for dinner? We didnt really do our research so we just walked into each restaurant and took a sift of each aura; ended up choosing some sandwich joint because they served fries which i havent ate all my time in boston. ...

[eligracely]

Before I am your daughter, your sister, your aunt, niece, or cousin, I am my own person, and I will not set fire to myself to keep you warm.

1/? Things To Remember  (via ahyasidi)

[kangalangaroo]

Hey, just want to hear your thoughts on this. Do you think life is absurd? Would love to know what you think. Cheers.

Hi! I do find life absurd. Absurdity -- approached from a POV as per Camus/French existentialism/theatre, invites primarily the notion of freedom. To me, by first acknowledging that nothing has meaning, mankind can then choose to him/herself craft meaning -- rather than derive meaning. This implies that you can reconstruct all types of cause-effect relationships, or ignore them altogether. 

In admitting that life is absurd, however, I don't sit well with surrendering rationale and living a 'free-form', 'atonal' lifestyle. I want and like to think that I live deliberately, gauging decisions and passions in the context of my immediate, past, and long-term selves. How does X behavior reflect on Tiffany at the moment? How does the childhood Tiffany emerge in my present worldview, and how different of a person do I want to be after X?

An individual evolves when the passing of time -- though absurd and meaningless -- is filled with self-awareness. That kind of energy and decision-making reflects the act of crafting -- rather than deriving -- meaning.

The belief that life is absurd is a revolutionary one. It empowers you with an agency as absurd as the absurdity of life itself. You are an artist: master, adorn, and adore the blankness around you!

[kangalangaroo]

At age 21 in my last academic semester, I am finally learning: "Where the West is rational, the Orient is irrational; the West active, the Orient passive; the West masculine, the Orient feminine; the West cerebral, the Orient sensual; the West progressive, the Orient decadent and semi- (or fully) barbaric -- perhaps outside the stream of history altogether; the West scientific and empirical, the Orient superstitious; the West self-governing, the Orient prone to despotism; the West orderly, the Orient chaotic; the West noble and trustworthy, the Orient habitually dishonest -- want of accuracy, which easily degenerates into untruthfulness, is in fact the main characteristic of the Oriental mind."

That in my pre-college career, I was taught Jim Crow but not Fu Manchu, Reconstruction vagrancy laws but not six decades of Chinese exclusion legislation, feminist discourse but never comfort women, post-colonialism but not a single narrative from the Opium Wars -- that I was given much to hold, but little to hold onto -- should this break me?

History is a stubborn monument. It insists: this is precisely what deserves engraving in the rock, these 20,000 pronounceable surnames pass easily through America's mouth. You? We saved this for you: a hundred square feet in the Smithsonian, a groundbreaking Korean art exhibit at the PMA gallery, all 31 days in the month of May. Consider yourself a seasonal trend. Consider yourself a beautiful fiction. An outstanding orphan.

Asian America isn't and might never be in the books. But Asian America is real. A true story brought each of my parents here. It happened. We happen. Recognize that this diluted history is a lesser blood than the thick flood that runs through us.

Most of all, I refuse to call this a tragedy. It will not break me. I will give thanks that no memorial, syllabus, or sanctioned holiday cares to labor over our footprints. It is not their responsibility; more importantly, it is not their privilege.

It is ours: to dig into the swell of survival, to envision the full panorama of death and livelihood that came before us. Imagine each fragmented memory that we have been robbed of the right to recall. Outrival the chronicle. Read and rewrite, read again and rewrite, until you can say: I remember.

[purplebuddhaproject]

Compassion hurts. When you feel connected to everything, you also feel responsible for everything. And you cannot turn away. Your destiny is bound with the destinies of others. You must either learn to carry the Universe or be crushed by it. You must grow strong enough to love the world, yet empty enough to sit down at the same table with its worst horrors.

Andrew Boyd (via purplebuddhaproject)

[humansofnewyork]

"A coworker asked for my number the other day. My friends overheard and said: ‘He must have a thing for Indians.’ I was like, ‘Or maybe I’m just really fucking cool.’"